


If You Can't Catch Me When I Fall

by Ntjnke



Category: The Colbert Report, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Genre: Don't read if RPF squicks you, F/M, M/M, RPF is still FICTION, This is RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 15:10:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2029746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ntjnke/pseuds/Ntjnke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your best friend is the one who would rather stay when you finally admit who you really are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Can't Catch Me When I Fall

**Author:** **Disclaimer:** All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual. .

 

 

If You Can’t Catch Me When I Fall

 

The story hit Monday night, just as Stephen was getting ready to leave the studio. The news networks blared it like the cheap tabloids they actually were. Nameless pundits gave cheap smiles from their sets, and the du jour anchorman was smug as he leaned into the camera with his announcement.

“Apparently some of Stephen Colbert’s jokes about sexual harassment are based on the truth!”

Stephen Colbert had been accused of coercing an intern into a sexual relationship.

The details The Intern gave the networks were lurid and perfect for a celebrity scandal. She had been new at the show, and Stephen had been gracious, kind, and funny. He had offered her an opportunity to contribute to the script, but only if only she would stay at the studio after hours. The workload, he said, would be less, and his concentration would be uninterrupted. They’d been alone in the building when things had quickly taken a frightening turn, and before she knew how to respond, threats were made. She said that she had submitted out of fear, out of a need to protect her career.

But now things were different, she told her interviewer. She felt confident, and she wanted to make sure that the same thing never happened to another young woman, another young _person,_ who felt pressured by her employer.

By the time Stephen’s car reached his home that night, he had seen the coverage and knew exactly what was ahead. The house was dark. He’d received a single text during the ride home saying the kids had been sent to a friend’s house for the night.

Before Stephen even had a chance to shut the door there was a crash of dishes hitting the wall and Evie was screaming.

“How could you! Godammit, Stephen!”

He really didn’t even have the right to act surprised. He could only duck, take a breath, and prepare the give the performance of his life.

_“Stephen Colbert: Fakenews Fornicator”_

For weeks, it would be the lead-in on every entertainment show and the splash headline for every tasteless magazine.

*****

Oblivious to the shouting in Montclair, Jon Stewart was trapped in his office, refereeing calls. Only hours past wrapping up a taping himself, his day had cascaded into chaos. His assistant was guarding the entrance to his office like some bizarre, pink-skirted totem against evil, sending interns for coffee and fielding requests as Jon tried to find a way to prevent the entire mess from exploding. Calls needed to be made. Scratch that, calls needed to _returned,_ then answered, and finally, new calls had to be made. And since network crises demand the personalized sound of a human voice instead of the efficiency of a well-penned e-mail, he knew he was going to be trapped in his thrice damned office for hours.

The correspondent piece for tomorrow was now completely inappropriate and he needed six minutes of new pretaped material on his desk by noon tomorrow. The script for Wednesday’s show would have to be given entirely to his senior writers so he could for once act in full capacity as the executive producer for _TCR_. Every suit at Comedy Central was loudly demanding that he come up with an intellectual and witty way to support _The Colbert Report_ without actual voicing any direct support of Stephen himself.

In short, life was fucked. He had a headache and wanted to go home. And Tracey, oh god, Tracey was going to be beyond pissed that he was again going to have to cancel on the one night a week they promised to each other.

As the New York evening wore on, Jon’s arm lifted of its own will to send a wash of stale coffee down the surface of his office television screen. The satisfaction of watching The Intern’s earnest and airbrushed good looks melt barely compensated for the insistent, demanding thump hammering its way between his eyes. For all her willingness to “share her story”, the bitch managed to never once mention how her need for justice included a twenty million dollar lawsuit for “personal grievances and emotional trauma”.

*****

The Toss on Tuesday night was a nightmare. Writing a twenty-two minute show in ten hours had always been enough to justify Stephen’s caffeine addiction. However, doing so under the constant pressures of admin, legal and PR had chipped away at him until he admitted to the writing staff that he needed them far more today than he ever had in the past, and if they could help him keep his head above water until tonight’s taping, he would love them forever far more than he already did.

So they wrote. The staff did their best to “think Stephen” while the real Stephen Colbert locked himself in his office with his desk phone on one shoulder and his cell phone cradled in his hands. In one business day, he had learned which of his staff unquestioningly supported him and which of them had completely lost their respect. A lifetime’s achievement seemed to disappear within hours.

At three, when he got the call for rehearsal, his hands were already starting to shake with exhaustion and his eyes had taken on the gritty sandpaper effect of a person desperately needing sleep. Hazily, he read the lines scrolling in front of him, blank eyed and fighting apathy. The second run was better, the words fell more smoothly off his tongue, but he knew there was no fire in the performance. The stage manager was the best the show could hope for, and he had already given up and was making calls to amp up the preshow.

Two hours before Stephen was due in the makeup chair, Chrissy ran up to Stephen with his cell phone, and after a few brief words from Central Production, he found himself in full character regalia on the set’s center seat. The feed had already started, with Michael counting off the roll tape, and Jon was right there, in camera one, once again not aware that the optics were connected and he could be seen two blocks away. His body language gave him away when he finally did notice, but it still took him a moment to raise his eyes from the script he was reviewing.

It was going to have to be adlibbed. Jon and the execs had agreed that an absence of the segment would imply that the network assumed he was guilty, that they wanted to disassociate the shows. But in all their corporate planning no one had thought to put together a decent Toss and rehearse the major players before taping began.

The result was five minutes of dead tape. Two veteran goof-offs with nearly ten years of shared history simply stared blearily at each other over two miles of fiber optic cable. They faced each other over tiny live-feed monitors, with no signs of friendship, no instant rapport, and the silence from Jon’s audience showed that they were pulling away. Michael gave up and began rolling a canned and previously rejected toss on Prompter 2. When that didn’t work, he held up his mic to ask for a cut feed and cut tape.

He was two blocks away, and no more than a tiny figurine on a stage feedback screen, but Jon’s smile when it finally did come did more to center Stephen than any battle plan he had drawn that day. Looking into the growing smirk of his friend, Stephen felt “it” start to bubble up in him and with a toss of his head threw out a greeting as if _any_ respectable comedic duo deserved five minutes of respectful silence before the start of their bit.

Jon held Stephen’s eyes as the audience in his studio drowned out Stephen’s voice, their clapping and shouts quickly growing into a roar of approval. Jon’s smile morphed into his stage grin, and he answered Stephen’s greeting by throwing his arms wide.

“Our good friend Stephen Colbert at _The Colbert Report_! Stephen!”

And Stephen waved and Jon’s audience cheered, and the two of them proceeded to do what they did best.

*****

Their on-air miracle was followed by a furious windstorm of admin, legal, PR, and Stephen’s life falling to pieces. The show still had to be produced but advertisers were abandoning timeslots. Viacom wanted yet more documentation, and programming was considering moving _TCR_ ’s slot to distance it from the network’s bastion program.

Evie had already left with the kids. When the story broke, she had leveled accusation after accusation at him, and when he could only hang his head, she booked the next flight home to South Carolina. There had been no calls, no letters, and no e-mails since then. It had been weeks and Stephen couldn’t shake the memory of the betrayed look Maddie had shot him when he’d tried to enter her room the day they’d left. She wouldn’t let him get a word in and had ignored him as she finished packing her suitcases.

Stephen, for some reason, met the public inquiry the same way he had always responded to public curiosity. He gave a smile, tossed them a joke, and kept his private life private. There were no interviews. No rebuttals to The Intern’s much repeated and constantly televised accusations. No mention was made of the lawsuit when Stephen was air, and no coverage of the lawsuit was followed on _The Daily Show_. He kept his image the same, and let the media morph it however they wished.

But when the studio closed for the night, and he tucked his jacket around him for the trip home, he couldn’t help but think that there was no one to talk about the situation even if he did want to talk.

His family was gone.

His friends, once numerous and loquacious, were suspiciously absent.

Amy, at least, was Amy.

Tenacious, constantly nagging, she'd wanted to know every detail and every explanation as to how and why Stephen could fuck up so royally.

“What the fuck were you thinking, Cabbage Patch?” The takeaway bag slammed gracelessly onto the kitchen countertop. When no answer was forthcoming, cartons were unpacked, beers were opened, and the verbal siege continued as she stalked into the living room.

“I said, ‘What the fuck were you thinking?’, Stephen.”

“The studio says I’m not...”

“Fuck the studio, Stephen. I’ve known you since before you _invented_ you, and this, _this,_ this whole situation reeks of liquid shit. Paul asked around and apparently you haven’t spilled a single word to a single person on the writing staff. You? Not talk?” With that, she down in a huff on the couch and turned to face him.

“Your wife, the freakin’ love of your life, has fled for the god-forsaken south _with your kids,_ and you still haven’t told me a goddamn thing.”

Stephen resolutely chewed his lo mein and kept his eyes on the television screen.

“Something is wrong Stephen, and you need to talk to us. We can’t do shit if we don’t know what’s going on. “

Stephen just shook his head and took a drink from his coke. Amy let out a sound of frustration.

“If you banged her…hell, if you did fucking pull that stunt…well, we we’ll have to kick your ass. But _we_ will kick your ass, Stephen. It stays between us. In the family. You know that don’t you?”

Despite everything, Stephen couldn’t stop the smirk that crept onto his face. Trust Amy to turn Montclair into 1920s Chicago.

That conversation had happened weeks ago, and, like everyone else, Amy hadn’t been around much lately.

He didn’t answer calls from his family. Well, he had spoken to his mom, but only to tell her not to worry because he had the best people working on his case.

Yes, Evie had moved back to her Mom’s, but the kids were safe and, if not well-adjusted, well cared for. Of course, I’ll call you if I need you, Mom. No, Mom, there’s nothing wrong but the obvious. I love you too, Mom. Good night, Mom.

And since Stephen didn’t consider lying to his mother a “conversation” per se, he could honestly say he hadn’t spoken to anyone outside of work in weeks.

Except Jon.

And that, of course, was hard. Their familiar and easy friendship had morphed into an awkward veneer of intimacy defined by careful smiles and careful conversation.

Stephen was alone as he climbed into the back seat of the car waiting to drive him home. And he was alone when he reached the large, now barren house in Montclair. And when he climbed into bed that night, lonely in the acreage of his bed, he told himself that some things were worth it.

*****

Unlike Stephen, Jon couldn’t keep people away. His image had been tied with Colbert’s for so long that in matters of Viacom/Comedy Central pinch-hitting, Jon Stewart was the go-to person. So, in addition to his actual responsibilities as head writer for _TDS_ and co-producer of _The Report_ , Jon was stuck in meeting after meeting because Stephen Colbert, lovable, irrepressible gold-mine that he was, had become a liability to the network.

Jon knew, though they had never sat down and talked about it, that Stephen trusted him to represent his work at the network, the career that Stephen had built from nothing. A career that _existed_ because Jon had helped him glue it together, piece by piece.

But meetings with lawyers made Jon _nervous._

No matter how successful he became, in a room full of suits he felt like an awkward teenager. Classless, underexposed, with mannerisms that stamped him immediately as from the lower-class Jersey suburbs. Not exactly the type of man you want defending your entire body of work.

Weeks into this litigation hellhole, Jon felt like he was failing his co-worker and best friend. Like he was spending hours every day talking to lawyers and admins and suits, and the hole Stephen was in was only getting deeper

Jon knew it would be so simple to fix. His worn grey t-shirts and faded cargoes sheltered a man who had an obsessive need for order in his life, to safeguard against unexpected disaster. He was admittedly obsessive about accounting for his personal finances and time.

So it had only taken him a few hours to find the bill for the hotel room that had been charged to his secondary credit card, registered under a legal pseudonym. The signed receipt from Le Signale showing payment for a dinner for two, with a careless cute note scrawled across the top in Stephen’s unmistakable handwriting. Backed up blackberry files showing him and Stephen in a meeting until early that evening. The dated pictures from his cameraphone of them at the river early the next morning, snapped by an overjoyed fan.

His office desk was stacked with simple, well-archived pieces of paper that, when showed to the appropriate people, could end this entire debacle. One tasteless story would be replaced by another, less scandalous story, and the media would recast Stephen as the repentant, once unfaithful husband who had tried to protect his family with his silence. His hard-earned fortune would be protected from greedy, cruel hands.

And Jon would lose everything.

The neat stacks across his desk mocked him as the hours passed. As the streets fell silent outside the studio, Jon just rested his head in his hands, propped his elbows on his knees, and quit resisting the temptation to pull at his hair.

*****

It was Saturday when Jon was forced to prioritize.

It hadn’t been much of a weekend so far. He had spent the last week feeling like there were vultures perched on his shoulders, observing his life to determine when it would be ready for the feast.

Breakfast that morning had been a game of playing with his daughter while watching his cell phone on the corner of the coffee table. He’d called his brother over lunch, and taken his kids to the park. The entire time, all he could think about was that while he was enjoying the warm September sunlight and playing the role of respectable dad, his best friend was being eaten alive by wolves.  
He couldn’t get the dichotomy out of his head.

He was pushing his kids on the merry-go-round. His best friend was in negotiations over custody right for his three children.

His wife had kissed him a sweet goodbye before he left their house that morning. Stephen had spent the weekend moving into a sterile apartment two blocks from the studio because his kids had “wanted to go home” and Evie couldn’t stand to look at him.

Jon knew he was safe in his work because, despite his overwork and the hellishness of the past few weeks, over two million people turned in every night to watch him essentially make faces at a camera.

Stephen’s studio had been facing dwindling crowds and angry letters about taking satire too far. His fans, while still rabid, were less now than they been a year ago, and the hard truth was that production and advertising dollars followed the viewers. Those viewers were leaving.

Jon knew he had willingly consented to the farce that he was the better man. The absolute construct that while similar in so many ways, Jon was the good one. The one who made the right choices. He had smiled at their audience, and agreed to let Stephen drown.

Jon came back from the park to twenty-seven missed calls. Tracey had finally taken the landline off the hook.

Viacom had canceled _The Colbert Report_.

*****

As the legal team filed into the conference room, Jon wondered about the kiss he had given his wife this morning, and whether there would be anymore. Whether Maggie would forgive him, and whether Nate would look at him the way Jon looked at his father. He wondered if twenty years from now, he would curse the folders he had prepared that morning.

“Morning, gentleman. I’m Jon Stewart, Stephen’s executive producer. Thank you so much for coming to meet me, especially on short notice. I wanted to talk about the details of Stephen’s case.”

In one morning, Jon proved that weeks of avoidance and half-smiles were absolutely unnecessary. People, in general, only see what they want to see.

*****

Tracey hadn’t believed a word when the news hit. She’d snorted and switched the channel before shooing Nate down the hall for this evening bath. When her mother called, she’s laughed and said that she’d been waiting for newstainment to drag Jon into the mess Stephen had created.

“The media, hell, the entire world, see them as a pair. It’s a two for one cash cow deal with them.”

When her sister said she was blind, she’d slammed down the phone, furious with her family for taking sides with strangers instead of with her. She was the _wife_ of the man they were discussing. She would _know._

So it was understandable that when she and Maggie entered the _TDS_ offices that night to pick Jon up for dinner, she was frustrated. But she managed to find a way to smile at the handful of people she passed, and let Maggie’s yammering distract her from the shut doors on either side.

The yelling was audible down the hall.

“What the hell were you thinking!?”

“I was thinking that you needed help!”

Tracey stopped and stared at her husband’s office door. The blood drained from her face.

“You have a family!”

“You think I don’t fucking know that!”

Sam had come up behind Tracey and was lifting Maggie up out of her stroller, meeting Tracey’s eyes and nodding when she saw the acknowledgment there. With small careful steps and cooing noises, she took Maggie down the hall and shut her office door behind her.

“I’m sorry, if in my apparent utter stupidity, I thought that only one of us should go down for this.”

“Down for this?! Do you even understand…”

As with all awful things, the timing was farcically brilliant. As Sam’s door shut, the shouting in Jon’s office ended and the door at the end of the hall was thrown open with a deafening slam. Stephen, still in stage makeup and a show suit, stalked out of Jon’s office and began marching towards the elevator, eyes red and swollen, face flushed red.

He stopped when he saw her. His eyes gave away that he was frantically searching for the right thing to say.

She could see the instant when he gave up and just decided to meet her eyes.

Jon, oblivious, had run right into Stephen’s back. He was intent on finishing his argument. His face was in Stephen’s, his hand pointed at his chest. He clearly hadn’t seen her yet.

But Tracey saw him.

She saw _them._

She saw the way Jon stood too close, even for friends who had known each other for years. She saw the way Stephen’s body welcomed Jon into his space, even if all his attention was focused on her. She recognized the mix of emotions on Jon’s face, rage suffused with love and frustration, an expression that she had only seen in their home.

Jon finally saw her when she unfroze and made to move back down the hall toward Sam’s office.

Always the most understanding of men, Jon let her walk away.

*****

It was done. It was out there. The whole world knew, and now they were more than just two fake news pundits who played at friendship for the camera. They were two infamous fake news pundits who’d apparently fucked each other out of loving homes. Jon and Stephen. Stewart and Colbert. Same channel. Same demographic.

Same fucking tailor.

It had always been so simple between them. Smiles and touches and wuffling breathes between evening kisses and warm sheets. Jokes interspersed between breathless gasps of delight, and practical jokes played to a lover who never needed an explanation, a warm-up, or a break between antics. The level of comfort between the two of them was almost hedonistic, but it was right and it was _theirs._ No references to the past, no promises for tomorrow. Just stolen time filled with joy, and silent prayers of thanks for beautiful things freely given.

Now there were divorces.

Lawyers, and custody battles, and long pleading conversations for second chances and marriage counseling.

Long after the crews of both shows had gone home, the two of them would sit in Jon’s office trying to rework an explanation they could offer to the women they loved. The two of them had built their careers on words. They were _good_ with them. However, now they needed words to explain an idea that, even between the two of them, felt ephemeral and hopelessly confusing.

What they wanted were words to explain how it felt to _know_ one is truly blessed, to know that one has a friend that will _always_ understand. A friend who never requires social masks and who holds one’s most basic identity beloved. How, with such a friend, one is forced to recognize that any time spent together is a gift, the interactions unavoidably intimate.

How, between such friends, intimacy and sexuality could be separate concepts.

They had known for years that if they laid themselves bare, if they didn’t moderate their behavior in public, strangers would stare aghast and throw inaccurate stones at their integrity as husbands and fathers. So they had tried, for their families’ sakes, to never give those strangers an opportunity to do so.

But when the damaged had been done, Jon had sat across from Tracey in an uncomfortably public place and tried to explain the sensation of strong arms holding him tight, and how a friend, his best friend, could provide the warmth that let him know it was alright to stop worrying about things he could never hope to control.

Stephen, instead, had sat alone in the apartment he was learning to hate. He’d kept his back curled into a kitchen corner while his wife repeated hurt question after question, and wished desperately that he had the words to convey the decadence of seeing sleep finally push his worn, frayed friend toward the mattress.

Neither woman had understood.

No one had understood.

The press had been relentless when it was discovered that Jon had not only provided the documented alibi for Stephen on the night in question, but he had also been the one to press slander charges against The Intern. When it was confirmed that the entire accusation had been a carefully constructed bid for cash, the gossip rags clung to the story not because it told a tale of redemption, but because it had been Jon Stewart beside Stephen Colbert in the court house. Neither of their wives had been present.

Likwise, the crews of both _The Daily Show_ and _The Colbert Report_ were no longer unwaveringly supportive. Furtive glances in writing sessions had morphed into knowing smirks when, almost a full year after the nightmare began, Stephen leaned into the camera to deliver his opening credits.

Jonathan Stewart, always the most casual of executive producers, had gotten Stephen’s show back on the air.

Now they both were in Jon’s office, long after the staff had gone home, struggling to find the correct combination of words because they feared that soon, very soon, their wives would give them no more opportunities to explain.

Curled together on the office couch, they helped each other try to find the words to explain that an intimate friend, no matter how close, could never replace a beloved wife and family.

*****

The hilarity of it was, before the shitstorm of the lawsuit, no one would have questioned catching the two of them like this. They would have just accepted it as “JonandStephen”, and left them alone.

“Shit, Jon. I’m sorry."

“No worries man. I’ve been told I make a pretty awesome pillow.”

And Stephen had to give in and chuckle.

Jon adjusted his friend more carefully against his side so the taller man could settle in. The two of them would make it through this.


End file.
